DISTRIBUTION OF BRITISH PLANTS. 325 



been cold and distant to those that came from the Channel 

 Islands. 



Some of the colonists which migrated from Central and 

 Western Europe, such, for instance, as Daisies and a spe- 

 cies of Crowfoot, the Primrose and the Little Celandine, 

 have indeed broken down this exclusiveness in some mea- 

 sure, and have contrived to make themselves so welcome 

 everywhere, that, let them wander where they will, they 

 always seem at home. 



It has been well said that "geology gives us the same 

 sort of bewildering view of the abysmal extent of time, which 

 astronomy does of space ;" and when we hear the strange 

 things which geologists tell us, about the previous history 

 of our own island, and the antiquity of its flora, we realize 

 the truth of this saying. There is a curious old picture of 

 the Deluge, in a mansion belonging to the Montmorency 

 family, in which a remote ancestor of that ancient house is 

 represented as swimming after the Ark, with a roll of parch- 

 ment in his mouth, containing the family genealogy. But 

 though we smile at the boasted antiquity of the race of 

 Montmorency implied in this picture, we must be prepared 

 to listen as to something much more like sober truth, when 

 we are told of long eras before man was created on the 

 earth, during which the ancestors of the flowers which now 



